


the future is...?

by kojum



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-13
Updated: 2013-07-13
Packaged: 2019-08-09 01:22:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16440407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kojum/pseuds/kojum
Summary: Time marches on, and, as always, she keeps pace flawlessly.[Six 100 word drabbles on Chell and GLaDOS post-game.]





	the future is...?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [altairattorney](https://archiveofourown.org/users/altairattorney/gifts).



> reposted to the Archive on 10/28/18, unedited from the original version. originally posted as a birthday fic for [altairattorney](https://archiveofourown.org/users/altairattorney/), a good friend and someone who's listened to me talk about Portal more than most.

Freedom.

The wind on her face, the sky spread out before her, Aperture locked up at her back. It's the closest to heaven she's ever been and so she opens her mouth and laughs, raspy and ragged and free. She laughs until it feels like there's neurotoxin burning in her throat and bullets catching in her sides, until she can't stand or breathe through the tightness in her chest, until she is doubled over and, finally, _finally,_ there is unfiltered air running through her lungs.

Freedom at last. It is an eternity before she whispers into the dirt: "What now?"

* * *

Laughter?

_Really?_

GLaDOS had switched over to watch the feed from the chip inside the subject's head because she thought that it would be a funny sight, seeing the reaction to her victory. ( _Victory._ A victory for GLaDOS, maybe. Safe and sound watching the best test she's ever set up.) Lesson learned; with a scoff, GLaDOS switches back to Aperture and sets up a program to record the chip's feeds.

She never laughed during the tests. Oh, she jumped and ran and killed, definitely. But she never _laughed._ Never even bothered to say a word.

At least she sounds hideous.

* * *

Living, of course, is hard.

The old joy in her bones is dulled. Starving in burned out shells of buildings is taking a toll, and Aperture's beatings have finally caught up to her. Her mornings begin with bloody coughing fits; her evenings end when she can't keep walking. The rain is relentless when it comes, and the sun is no better.

And yet there's a voice in the back of her head: _How's your "freedom?" Is it everything you thought it would be?_ It is enough for her to swallow everything and greet the next day with a forced smile.

* * *

Her life outside is, unsurprisingly, a disappointment.

She doesn't make it ten miles before she stalls out in some crumbling residential area. The place was interesting for the first thirty hours, but now? All the asbestos-covered buildings look the same. GLaDOS can't stand to look at another burnt wall.

And yet, she stays.

_Why?_ GLaDOS wants to ask her. _There's nothing here to stuff yourself with. Why won't you leave?_

Her vitals answer these questions. GLaDOS ignores them. She's brain damaged and riddled with untreated medical conditions and this is still a test. GLaDOS will _not_ start accepting excuses _now._

* * *

It comes on a cool spring morning.

There's not any surprise to it; she'd felt it deep in her chest after she got sicker. But one morning something's hanging over her, and she knows that's it. If anything, it feels like a relief. _Finally._

She staggers out of her last house and makes it to a tree on a small hill. She collapses against the trunk, looks out at the wheat beyond her, and breathes. She can't bring herself to die in a musty shell, and she doesn't.

The last thing she feels is a gentle breeze on her face.

* * *

Her death is not a momentous event.

She is alive, then she is floundering, then she is dead. Her vitals flatline surprisingly quickly and what little brain activity she had disappears.

GLaDOS quietly watches this through the chip in her head. Two years of boring footage, and the finale is her dying beneath a tree at dawn? "Pathetic" would be an understatement.

The recordings are quickly sorted into folders somewhere on her hard drive and promptly forgotten about. _Bigger and better things,_ GLaDOS says to an empty chamber. _Good riddance._ Time marches on, and, as always, she keeps pace flawlessly.


End file.
